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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27002713">A Bedside Manor Anthology</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sipjackerryjuice/pseuds/sipjackerryjuice'>sipjackerryjuice</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tales from the Gas Station</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bedside Manor, Jackerry, M/M, SPOILERS!!!!!, and for volume 3 probably, angsty endings, jackxjerry, jerk, spoilers for Bedside Manor obviously, tw blood and gore</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:54:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,406</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27002713</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sipjackerryjuice/pseuds/sipjackerryjuice</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Things I wrote out while Bedside Manor was still ongoing.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jack/Jerry (Tales From the Gas Station)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Ouroboros</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi everybody!<br/>this is an anthology of the things I wrote when Bedside Manor was still going<br/>thank you to Jess, Anne, Aut, Mesa and everyone else on the Pain Gravy discord who constantly hypes up me and my angsty writing<br/>as always leave a comment/kudos if you liked it and enjoy!!</p><p>p.s. if Jack sees this, I'll take a nice long soak in the Yellowstone Caldera</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“JACK! COME ON!”<br/>
My legs gave out from under me, and when he noticed, Jerry grabbed me and yanked me up into his arms. My vision swam. We made it out the front door before the flames exploded outwards. The smoke blotted out the rising sun. As soon as we were far enough away to suck in (mostly) clean air, Jerry collapsed. We hacked and wheezed, and I threw up the meager contents my stomach had to offer— bile and chunks of Nathaniel. I looked back, and what was once Bedside Manor was now just a pillar of flames. Jerry and I were the only ones who had escaped. Thinking about it too long made me want to dry heave, so I didn’t. Jerry pulled me to my feet. The fear and desperation in his eyes were nothing like I’d seen from him before.<br/>
“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here, Jack.”<br/>
I nodded, and we began running until we were met with the most relieving sight I’d seen in what felt like years—my shitty little Nissan. Every bone in my body ached and screamed. I could hear the sounds of the death throes of those buggy little bastards. I could feel the heat creeping in. The fire was spreading.<br/>
“DO YOU STILL HAVE THE KEYS?!” I cried.<br/>
Jerry shoved his hand into his ragged suit jacket pocket, and miraculously, he’d held onto them.<br/>
We jumped in the car, and I prayed while he turned the keys in the ignition. When it roared to life, I shouted in excitement. Jerry tore out of there like a bat out of hell. When we got far enough away, I took stock of what we had left in the back.<br/>
Jerry and I tore into the water bottles and granola bars left in the backseat like it was a four-course meal. My stomach protested violently the moment solid food was put into it. <br/>
I really wish I had gotten my pills back.<br/>
Jerry just kept driving, taking us farther away from that hellscape. The scenery began to melt together.<br/>
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xua_AOTOw8PbwOYrysBRh_iIjbeLnEp9/view?usp=sharing">To be honest, I was surprised we made it as far as we did.</a> My old Nissan had been on life-support for the better part of the last decade. Now that it was dead, I almost felt relief. Like the machine could finally be at peace in the great afterlife parking lot in the sky. Of course, that relief was easily outweighed by the newfound panic of being stranded in the middle of an unfamiliar nowhere.<br/>
Jerry was under the hood doing everything short of dark magic in his attempts to get the engine running again while I paced the road with a cell phone over my head, hoping for a single bar of connectivity and feeling about as useful as male nipples.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Murphy's Law</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I woke up in the dark, with not really a clue where I was. I sat up and realized I was in a bed. This was <i>definitely</i> not my house. Underneath the blankets next to me was a large, familiar shape. Another person.<br/>
I debated on what I should do, eventually deciding to pull off the covers. He let out a groan and sat up, rubbing his eyes.<br/>
“What is it, honey? Did you have another nightmare?”<br/>
It took my brain longer than it should have to process that the man that had been laying in bed next to me was Jerry. His long blond hair was tied up into a man-bun and his face was cleanly shaven. All he was wearing was a pair of heart-print boxers.<br/>
My voice broke a little as I spoke.<br/>
“Jerry?”<br/>
He pulled me in, close to his chest. This felt different from any of the other times Jerry had hugged me. It was tender.<br/>
“The kids have to be up for school soon. Why don’t we just lay here for a little while and then I’ll get up and make chocolate chip pancakes?”<br/>
My mouth began to water severely at the mention of pancakes. <i>How long had it been since I’d eaten?</i><br/>
What was I saying, I’d eaten only last night. Jerry made... lobster? Yeah, that sounds right. He made seafood, and then we cuddled and drank wine right after putting the kids to bed. <i>Huh? We what?</i><br/>
My head ached with so many different and contradictory memories. Jerry leaned in close and for a brief moment I thought, <i>is he gonna kiss me?</i> And then I realize <i>yes, he’s definitely leaning in for a kiss</i>, but I was a moment too late because his lips were on mine.<br/>
I was surprised by how right it felt. I lost myself in it.<br/>
Only when we broke away did I notice the wedding ring on my ring finger, and then the one on Jerry’s. And the photos on the wall. Looking at the family photos on the walls, the sense of familiarity and happiness I felt was slowly replaced with a creeping sense of something being very very wrong. Jerry, me, and two children. An older boy and a younger girl.<br/>
“Are you okay, J?”<br/>
<i>Something was very wrong, I was sure of it now.</i><br/>
“Yeah, I’m fine.”<br/>
I pushed it down for now. I laid there, head against Jerry’s unshaven chest. His heartbeat was a sound I’d never thought could be so relaxing. A strange feeling was stirring inside me. I couldn’t stop thinking about how nice this was.<br/>
The alarm on the nightstand rang— for a split second, it almost sounded like the scream of a woman —and Jerry gently kissed my forehead and pulled himself out from underneath me.<br/>
“I’m gonna go get the kiddos up.”<br/>
I got out of bed and pulled down my hoodie. We’d had a bit of a wild night after the kids went to bed last night, and I was wearing his way-too-big-hoodie and nothing else. <i>Wait, what?</i><br/>
“I’ll come with you.”<br/>
I followed behind him as we left the bedroom to a carpeted hallway. He walked to a purple door adorned with tons of stickers. Written out in pink paint in the middle was “Vanessa”.<br/>
Jerry knocked softly on the door and opened it, clicking on the light. Our adopted daughter was sitting on the floor, playing with her dolls and dollhouse. I saw a knowing smile cross Jerry’s face.<br/>
But it didn’t quite reach his eyes.<br/>
“Oh Van, you’re always such an early riser huh?”<br/>
She turned around, dropped her dolls, and  ran over to Jerry, latching onto his leg.<br/>
“Daddy daddy daddy!”<br/>
A memory hit me in that moment. I don’t know where it came from, it wasn’t mine.<br/>
Vanessa had been so tiny when we first got her, with tan skin and little tufts of black hair. She’d cry just about all the time, except when Jerry was holding her. She was truly the apple of his eye.<br/>
“Jack, can you go wake up the little cowboy for me?”<br/>
I nodded and, after bending down to plant a kiss on Vanessa’s cheek, I went down the hallway to the next door. It was a light blue, but had not nearly as much decoration as Vanessa’s door. I pushed it open and the light cut through the darkness of the bedroom about as well as sunlight through a dark ocean.<br/>
I clicked on the light and to my surprise, our son was already awake.<br/>
And that’s when my brain caught up to what my subconscious already knew.<br/>
Wolfgang grinned at me.<br/>
“Morning, Dad.”<br/>
I held everything back and returned a curt “morning, kiddo”. I knew if I pulled anything, I was close enough where Jerry would hear me.<br/>
I couldn’t look him in the eyes.<br/>
“Breakfast will be ready soon. Get ready for school please.”<br/>
He got up and walked over to me, hugging me.<br/>
“Sounds good, Dad.”<br/>
I resisted the urge to shove him away. In a harsh whisper, he said “he’s next, you know.”<br/>
I gritted my teeth and resisted the urge to punt him across the room.</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p> <b>***</b> </p>
</div>As Jerry cooked breakfast, I only saw more things wrong. His posture was all wrong. He seemed more on edge. His behavior was familiar in the worst of ways.  I’d seen it before, and thinking about just where I’d seen it made my chest hurt.<br/>“Wolfie, did you remember to take your medicine kiddo?”<br/>“Yes Dad.”<br/>Jerry nodded and smiled. Again, it didn’t reach his eyes.<br/>Vanessa readjusted the phonebooks that let her reach the table and chirped in her sweet voice “Daddy makes the best pancakes!”<br/>Her joy was infectious. Even I managed a smile.<br/>“I’m sure Daddy appreciates that very much, Vanessa.”<br/>And she wasn’t wrong. I ate until I felt like my stomach would burst.<br/>Jerry took them to school, and once alone, I considered my options. If I could get Wolfgang alone, maybe I could drag him outside and deal with him without Jerry or Vanessa hearing and... <i>god what am I thinking? There’s no way I’d get away with that. I mean, he was our son.</i><br/>But one thing was for certain, I wasn’t gonna let him do shit to Jerry.<br/>
<p></p><div>
  <p> <b>***</b> </p>
</div>The day flew by in a blur. One minute the sun was just coming up. Next, we were sitting at the dinner table. Wolfgang has a glint in his eyes that I was not liking.<br/>Jerry looked... wrong. He put on a jovial facade, but his eyes told a different story. He looked sad, tired, at the end of his rope. After we’d finished dinner, and I’d helped Vanessa clean up the dishes, I went upstairs to take a shower. I turned on the water and stepped in. I closed my eyes as the warmth washed over me and when I opened my eyes, I screamed. The red ran over my body and down the drain and I nearly slipped and fell. It took me way too long to realize that it was red Kool-Aid. The little bastard had put Kool-Aid in the shower head. I stumbled out of the shower and out of the bathroom, wrapped in only a towel, wet and sticky. My annoyance was replaced with dread when the thick, sweet scent of iron hit my nostrils. Things began to move too fast for me as I saw the trail of blood. I ran down the hallway to the stairs, and at my feet, laid out just like a present especially for me, was our daughter. She’d been opened up the middle and gutted like a trout. He’d scattered her organs along the stairs and they were slick with her blood. A Glasgow grin was carved into her now-pale cheeks. I turned and painted my half-digested dinner all over the carpet. It was all I could do to lift up her poor mutilated body and carry her in my arms back to her bedroom. I laid her down in her bed and closed her terror-stricken eyes, kissing her forehead.<br/>“Goodnight my little angel” I whispered, in a shaking voice. I could weep over her later. There would be time for that. For now, I had to stop Wolfgang.<br/>I slid down the bannister of the stairs and raced to the kitchen. Jerry was sitting there, crying. A glass of whiskey in one hand, a cigarette in the other. I could see his hands shaking.<br/>Before I could call out his name, Wolfgang was behind him. The steak-knife glinted in the moonlight.<br/>Jerry froze. His eyes moved over to me, and I knew he saw me.<br/>“Wolfgang, don’t.”<br/>Wolfgang turned and looked me dead in the eyes.<br/>“Please don’t,” I begged him.<br/>He spoke in a voice not his own. It was the voice of the detective.<br/>“Face it Jack. You’ll never get your happy ending, no matter how hard you try.”<br/>Then he grinned, and dug the knife into Jerry’s throat. I watched his blood spray all over the kitchen and his head fall backwards. Wolfgang had nearly decapitated him.<br/>He let Jerry’s corpse fall to the floor, the look of sadness and hopelessness frozen on his lifeless face. The same look that had been frozen on Hope’s lifeless face in each previous iteration. I couldn’t move. Wolfgang laughed.<br/>“You’re not even gonna do anything are you? You really are pathetic.”<br/>I snatched the umbrella from next to the doorway and threw it, the handle pegging him square in the forehead. He was sent sprawling to the floor. I took this moment to fly across the kitchen faster than I thought possible, snatching a knife from the block. Before Wolfgang could make his escape, I was on him. I dug the knife into his stomach.<br/>“HOW DOES IT FEEL?! HOW DOES IT FEEL YOU LITTLE RAT BASTARD?!”<br/>Wolfgang didn’t even have a chance for last words. Over and over I plunged the knife into his torso and hot blood bubbled up from his mouth. When I saw the life nearly gone from his eyes, I brought my elbow down into his face as hard as I could manage. This was met with a loud crack and as I wiped the blood off of myself, I saw the defiant look in his cold, dead eyes.<br/>I screamed and flung his corpse at the wall, before moving to weep over Jerry's lifeless body.<br/>“WHAT NEXT?! WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY DO THAT’S WORSE THAN THIS?!”
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Embrace</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I took in my surroundings. Here we were again, seated around the dinner table. To my right, Jerry. To my left, Loren. Across from me… I could barely make it out, but that looked like it must have at some point been Wolfgang.<br/>
My eyes stung like they’d been brining in salt for hours. The air was thick with dust, but when I coughed, my lungs felt like they were on fire. My muscles were jello. As I wiggled my fingers and feeling began to return to my extremities, a trickle of blood ran out of my nose. The room was dim and hot. I could begin to make out the forms of the other guests of Bedside Manor— or what was left of them —as tears washed my eyes. I coughed again hard and heaved at the sight of the withered bodies. Everyone looked so much different now. Bridget and Tobias were by far the worst. Dust covered their skeletal faces and as I moved just a bit closer, I saw their eyes moving around in their sockets.<br/>
I walked over to Claire. I gently put my fingers up to her neck, but her hand reached out and snatched my wrist.<br/>
<i>Do not waste what little time you have been given.</i><br/>
Her hand fell back to her side.<br/>
“Claire,” I said. “I’m not going to leave you.”<br/>
<i>Jack, you cannot save us. We’ve been here too long, waiting for you and your friend. If you don’t leave here and now, no one will. She’ll burn you, along with the rest of us.</i><br/>
That’s when I saw her.<br/>
Well, I didn’t see her. I could only feel the heat, and register her presence. My eyes rejected looking directly at the space she occupied. My brain labeled her energy as a black hole mixed with a super volcano.<br/>
“Hey,” I said. “Is this whole thing your idea?”<br/>
“Yes,” she said in a voice that was all too familiar. I was sure it was another mind game, but I hated it all the same.<br/>
“Fuck you, this is all some cliche sci-fi bullshit. I’ve read dollar store novels that were better than this. It’s awful, and I hate it.”<br/>
I watched her energy flare from orange to red.<br/>
“Well if you’d cooperated like you were supposed to, you wouldn’t be seeing this. You just had to go and fuck with the system. You know there’s no protocol for this, Jack? Nothing like this has happened in a trillion years.”<br/>
“Yeah, well you can go suck cocks in hell.”<br/>
The room began to grow hotter as I heard her shriek in frustration and rage. Streams of hot blood burst from my ears and nose.<br/>
I turned and ran over to Jerry, shaking him. That’s when I realized it wasn’t dust. The stuff in the air, the stuff all over the other “patrons” of Bedside Manor. It was ash, and it was still hot to the touch. It was all over him. I quickly started brushing it off him. As I did this, I became more and more aware of our surroundings. The small fires around the room were the source of the dim light. Every breath I took stung my lungs.<br/>
Jerry’s eyes shot open. They were red and bloodshot. He coughed and sputtered.<br/>
“Ugh! Is it hot in here Jack? Or is it just me?”<br/>
I shook my head, trying to work through that sentence with my slowly-shutting-down brain.<br/>
“We have to get out of here, Jerry.”<br/>
He nodded.<br/>
Fire spewed out from the fireplace like an angry dragon, bathing the room in a red glow. Everything began to feel slow, like it had when I took my painkillers after losing my leg. I started for the door, Jerry hot on my heels. The air grew thick with black smoke, so much so that I couldn’t see what direction I was going in. My lungs felt as if they were filled with fire, and I could hear Jerry hacking and wheezing behind me.<br/>
“This way I think!”<br/>
“No no, it’s this way.”<br/>
We kept trying to find a way out of what had now truly become Hell. I think on some level, we both already knew the truth. Everything continued to get slower and slower. I could feel my brain cooking in my skull.<br/>
I fell to my knees, finally feeling numb to the agony that was my flesh popping and sizzling. All I saw were red and orange and black until…<br/>
Blue. Sweet, merciful blue. Not water, or ice, but the best I had left to hope for.<br/>
“It’s okay. I’m here. It’s okay. We can find a way out.”<br/>
He was lying. We both knew he was lying. But it was nice to hear.<br/>
“I’m sorry… that I got us stuck here…”<br/>
“It’s not your fault….. Don’t apologize…..”<br/>
He wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t fight it. In fact, I did the same. Clinging onto him was all I had the energy left to do. It felt right. I was okay with this. I could die like this.<br/>
Jerry’s words grew slower, more slurred. It felt like I was at the bottom of the ocean and he was whispering to me from the shore.<br/>
“There’s something I should’ve told you before now….. I’m not gonna have much more time to say it……”<br/>
Ash flakes piled up in his wild, blond hair. I couldn’t help but imagine them as snowflakes.<br/>
I looked up into his eyes. They looked so big and blue, and they were filled with tears. Mine had already dried up in the fire. Maybe if Jerry tried hard enough he could put out the fire with those.<br/>
My brain felt like a marshmallow held too long over a fire.<br/>
His words had reached the speed of molasses dripping out of a bottle.<br/>
“Jack……….. I……… love………. you……”<br/>
Maybe if we were in a different time, in a different place, I would have reacted differently. But nothing mattered in this moment anymore. I was deciding how I would choose to leave this mortal plane. If I had to go out like this, I was going out with a bang. I rose my hand to his slowly blackening cheek. Every move sent shockwaves of pain through me, but I felt detached from them. It felt like an eternity before my hand was on his face.<br/>
“I…………………..know ………………..I ……………………………love …………………………………………………..you ………………………………………………………………………….too……………………………”<br/>
Empires rose and fell in the time it took my lips to reach his. In an infinitely long second, his lips moved against mine, and that was where time stopped.<br/>
I don’t know how long we’ve been frozen here like this, only smoke and fire all around. But I don’t care. Truthfully, it’s one of the better moments I could’ve ended up stuck in. All that matters to me is Jerry. His blue eyes, his hands held so tightly around me, his cracked and broken lips pressed so close against mine.<br/>
Maybe someday, someone will find our corpses buried in ash, locked in an <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ijnHsh7xsO6f3IzIGJ8Wi6YO7vDv-OH6/view?usp=sharing"><i>embrace.</i></a></p>
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